The Life of Cardinal Wolsey

by George Cavendish

This passage, warm from the heart, could have been written by none but a zealous anti-reformist. That certainly was not Sir William Cavendish. He had been one of the principal instruments in effecting what I must be allowed to call a necessary and glorious work. Men are not accustomed to record their own condemnation with such a bold, untrembling hand. That hand, which is supposed to have penned these words, had been once extended to receive the conventual seal of the Priory of Sheen, and the Abbey of St. Alban’s. The person by whom we are to believe they were written had been an officer in that court which was purposely erected to attend to the augmentation of the king’s revenue by the sequestration of ecclesiastical property; the proceedings of which court were too often unnecessarily harsh and arbitrary, if not unjust and oppressive. Nay, more, at the very time these words were written, Sir William Cavendish was living on the spoils of those very monasteries whose overthrow is so deeply deplored; and rearing out of them a magnificent mansion at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, to be the abode of himself and his posterity. After so long and so decided a passage, it has been thought unnecessary to quote any other: but throughout the work appears the same zeal in the writer to signalize himself as a friend to the old profession. May not this be considered as amounting to something almost conclusive against the supposition that the attendant upon Wolsey and Sir William Cavendish were the same person?

Sir William Cavendish did not change with the times.

Will it be said that he turned with the times; that he who, in the Protestant reigns, had been zealous for the Gospel, in the Catholic reign was equally zealous for the Mass: and that this work was his amende to the offended party? I know not of any authority we have for charging this religious tergiversation upon Sir William Cavendish, who, for any thing that appears in his history, was animated by other views in promoting the cause of reform, than the desire of personal advancement, and of obtaining the favour of his prince: and I am prepared with two facts in his history, not mentioned by former writers, which are unfavourable to such a supposition. The first shows that he was in some disgrace at the court of Queen Mary as late as the fourth year of her reign; the second, that he did not seek to ingratiate himself there. On the 17th of August, 1556, a very peremptory order of council was issued, commanding his “indelaid repaire” to the court to answer on “suche matters as at his cōmyng” should be declared unto him. The original, subscribed by seven of the Queen’s council, is among the Wilson collections mentioned in the [note at page 22]. What the particular charges were it is not material to our argument to inquire. The next year also, the year in which he died, he ungraciously refused a loan of one hundred pounds required of him and other Derbyshire gentlemen by the Queen, when her majesty was in distress for money to carry on the French war. These facts show that though he was continued in the offices of treasurer of the chamber and privy counsellor, he was in no very high esteem with Queen Mary, nor sought to conciliate her favourable regards. To which we may add, that his lady, whose spirit and masculine understanding would probably give her very considerable influence in the deliberations of his mind, was through life a firm friend to the Reformation, and in high favour with Queen Elizabeth.

Whatever effect the preceding facts and argument may have had upon the reader’s mind, there is a piece of evidence still to be brought out, which is more conclusive against the claim of Sir William Cavendish. Soon after the Cardinal was arrested at his house of Cawood in Yorkshire, Cavendish tells us that he resorted to his lord, "where he was in his chamber sitting in a chaire, the tables being spred for him to goe to dinner. But as soone as he perceived me to come in, he fell out into suche a wofull lamentation, with suche ruthefull teares and watery eies, that it would have caused a flinty harte to mourne with him. And as I could, I with others comforted him; but it would not be. For, quoth he, nowe I lament that I see this gentleman (meaning me) how faithefull, how dilligent, and how painefull he hath served me, abandonning his owne country, wife and children, his house and family, his rest and quietnesse, |The author married and a father before 1530.| only to serve me, and I have nothinge to rewarde him for his highe merittes." p. 517.

Hence it appears that the Cavendish who wrote this work was married, and had a family probably before he entered into the Cardinal’s service, certainly while he was engaged in it. At what precise period he became a member of the Cardinal’s household cannot be collected from his own writings. Grove says it was as early as 1519[25]; the Biographia tells us that the place was procured for him by his father, who died in 1524. This however is certain, that the first mention of himself, as one in attendance upon the Cardinal, is in the exceedingly curious account he has given of the means used to break the growing attachment between the Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn, in order to make way for the king. Cavendish was present when the Earl of Northumberland took his son to task. This must have been before the year 1527; for in that year the Lord Percy became himself Earl of Northumberland; and probably it was at least a twelvemonth before; for ere the old Earl’s departure, a marriage had been concluded between Lord Percy and the Lady Mary Talbot, a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury[26]. In 1526 then, the Cavendish who wrote this work was a member of Wolsey’s household. Now, |Not so Sir William Cavendish.| fortunately for this inquiry, it happens that an exact account has been preserved of the several marriages and the numerous issue of Sir William Cavendish. It is to be found in the funeral certificate, which, according to a laudable custom of those times, was entered by his relict among the records of the College of Arms. This document, subscribed by her own hand, sets forth that her husband’s first-born child came into the world on the 7th of January, in the 25th year of King Henry VIII. This answers to 1534: that is at least seven years after the Cavendish, for whom we are inquiring, had become a member of Wolsey’s family, and more than three years after the Cardinal had remarked that his gentleman usher had left “wife and children, his home and family, his rest and quietnesse,” only to serve him. This is decisive.

The funeral certificate where to be found.

The document which contains these family particulars of the Cavendishes is not known only to those gentlemen who have access to the arcana of the College of Arms. It has been published: and it is remarkable that Arthur Collins, who has been a principal cause of the error concerning the author of this work, gaining such firm hold on the public mind, should have been the first to lay before the public a record which proves beyond dispute that the Cavendish who wrote the Life of Wolsey could not be the Cavendish who was the progenitor of the house of Devonshire. It is printed in his ‘Noble Families,’ where is a more complete account of the Cavendishes than is to be found in his Peerage, and which might have been transferred with advantage into the later editions of that work. This document has also been printed by Guthrie and Jacob, whose account of the nobility of this nation may often be consulted with advantage, after having read any of the editions of Collins. Of its authenticity, the only point material to this inquiry, no suspicion can reasonably be entertained.

We have now brought to a conclusion our inquiry into the right of the tenant in possession. It has been questioned, examined, and, I think, disproved. It is not contended that the common opinion respecting Sir William Cavendish’s attendance upon Wolsey does not harmonize well enough with what is known of his real history, and to render our proof absolutely complete, it might seem to be almost incumbent upon us to show how Sir William Cavendish was engaged while Wolsey’s biographer was discharging the duties of his office as an attendant upon the Cardinal. Could we do this, we should also disclose the steps by which he attained to his honourable state employments, and the favour |How the early years of Sir William Cavendish may have been spent.| of successive monarchs. In the absence of positive testimony I would be permitted to hazard the conjecture, that in early life he followed the steps of his father, who had an office in the court of Exchequer. Such an education as he would receive in that court would render him a most fit instrument for the purpose in which we first find his services used, the suppression of the monasteries, and the appropriation of the lands belonging to them to his royal master. Having signalized his zeal, and given proof of his ability in this service, so grateful to the King, we may easily account for his further employments, and the promotions and rewards which followed them. Let it however be observed, that this is no essential part of our argument; nor shall I pursue the inquiry any further, mindful of the well known and sage counsel of the Lord Chancellor Bacon.

I would however be permitted to say something on that very extraordinary woman, the lady of Sir William Cavendish, and the sharer with him in raising the family to that state of affluence and honour in which we now behold it. Indeed she was a more than equal sharer. He laid the foundation, she raised the superstructure; as she finished the family palace at Chatsworth, of which he had laid the first stone.